


A Thousand Candles

by Lisse



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Gen, Historical, Solidarity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-02-10
Updated: 2009-02-10
Packaged: 2018-02-17 18:22:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2318963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lisse/pseuds/Lisse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The walls are falling, falling.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Thousand Candles

The government swoops in right in the middle of the night. Poland wakes up to weapons pointed at his face and the prospect of being arrested in his pajamas, which would be hilarious if it wasn't so damn annoying.

He looks from one face to the next - they're SB, he thinks, secret police, and he doubts he's the only one they're going after tonight - before he yawns without bothering to cover his mouth and flings an arm over his eyes.

"Five more minutes," he says. "And somebody get me some clothes."

* * *

He's treated slightly better than everyone else, or at least he assumes he is, because he's pretty damn sure the rest of Solidarność isn't taken to see Jaruzelski up close and in person. The general gives him a befuddled look - the same expression most of his people get when they realize that the personification of their country is small and blond and waiting for them to do something interesting and possibly wearing pigtails just for the hell of it - and then there's a lot of blathering about protecting Poland from a military crackdown by the Soviet Union and how martial law is necessary and blah blah _blah_.

Poland tunes the man out long enough to wonder if this is true, and then whether Jaruzelski believes it is, which is something totally different. He decides it doesn't matter one way or the other. "So, like, why arrest me?"

"You're being detained for your own safety," Jaruzelski says. He looks put-upon.

"Sure I am." Poland slinks down in his chair, arms not so much folded as absent-mindedly draped across his chest, and grins in a way that shows all his teeth.

* * *

After that he's chucked in a cushy set of rooms that still manage to look like a cell, with sealed windows and locked doors and guards who appear to be under strict orders to leave their country the hell alone, no matter how much he whines at them about being bored out of his skull.

Left to his own devices, Poland tests the bed (squishy, unsuitable for jumping), the chairs (too hard), and the windows (pretty damn solid). The floor and walls prove to have a distressing lack of trapdoors, the ceiling has nothing except a light fixture and is out of reach anyway unless he stands on a chair and jumps, and the radio someone's left for him picks up static and official channels and not a trace of Radio Free Europe, so he can't even snicker at how badly America's bungling things.

He settles for pacing, then counting steps, then dancing mazurka across the floor and sticking his tongue out at the guard who pokes his head in to see what all the noise is about. If he feels the way the air in his lungs has the stale suffocating weight of censorship, the way his movements are stiff from too many curfews, the faint aches of old war wounds and the odd tense giddiness of the strikes - well, he is good at ignoring all of that.

Poland is too resilient to worry about his own survival.

* * *

The feels the strikes stutter out-and-into existence the same way he felt Gdańsk not so long ago, the same way he felt the war in fits and starts and last desperate gasps for air. Sometimes he wonders why anyone is surprised by this. His people all know what he is instantly, the moment they spot him attempting to decorate his Solidarność banner with glitter or grabbing someone and towing them along on one ridiculous half-planned errand or another - or when his cities burn and his lungs seize up from the smoke and strangers he's always known all but drag him away to safety.

It would be a lie to say he wakes up every night gasping and screaming and choking on the memories of the war.

It would also be a lie to say he has forgotten, or to suggest that there isn't something ancient and wounded and vicious lurking beneath the surface when he mentions that one of his life goals is to, like, totally kick Germany in the nuts.

Few things have ever scared him. He could count them on one hand, if he felt so inclined, and if Germany is nowhere on his list, then Russia or whatever he's calling himself these days isn't either.

His own government never stands a chance of intimidating him.

* * *

The guards are remarkably easy to manipulate. All Poland has to do is bang on his door, a steady thump-thump-thump while he somehow manages to turn  _pull the bars from the walls_ into something peppy and lively and warbling, and soon enough he gets them staring down at him with an expression that suggests they really  _really_ want to commit treason and throttle him.

At first he does this to be annoying, because it's something to do and he's never been the type to sit quietly and endure - because he's their country and if he wants to make faces at them or demand better pillows or make pointed comments about churches until one of them caves and promises to find him a rosary, that's well within his rights.

It's only when those too-familiar sharp, quick pains start reappearing that he changes the tempo of his hammering - the way it's supposed to be, _they lit a thousand candles_ and sometimes _march, march, Dąbrowski_ , and when the guards finally respond to him he is perched on his too-hard chair in the middle of the room, quiet and dangerous and still.

"How's Wujek?" he asks after a moment. "Still, like, _shooting_ people there for no good reason?"

The guards don't bother to ask how he knows these things - don't say anything, don't even move when he hops off the chair and starts toward them. He remembers hussars and their graceful arching wings, remembers the feel of his sword in his hand and Europe laid out before him, remembers Warsaw and the Home Army; he doesn't stop until he's closer than arms' reach, tilting his head up to look at them.

"Just wondering," Poland says.

He watches the guards try to stagger back out the door without looking like they're running. He even waves after them and grins - but it doesn't reach his eyes - before he spins around, suddenly exhausted and adrift, and stumbles backwards himself until he feels the bed behind him and allows himself to collapse onto it.

* * *

The sense of his people's unrest is still there, like something inside him is coiled and tangled and ready to burst - and he's not surprised, not really, because he knows his people and their history and what they're capable of, maybe better than some of his people know themselves. But he worries for them all the same, the feeling strange and gnawing.

He is afraid for them. He is proud of them.

He wonders when he ever became so honest with himself.

_And the walls will fall, fall, fall,_ he thinks, red-and-white flags dancing across his vision, _and bury the old world_.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic takes place during the early days of the communist military government (somewhere around late 1981/early 1982), led by Wojciech Jaruzelski, and the Solidarność or Solidarity trade union. 
> 
> The two songs Poland sings/harasses people with are "Mazurek Dąbrowskiego" (aka the Polish national anthem) and "Mury" or "Walls," which is seriously the most depressing protest song ever, wtf Poland.
> 
> The totally misnamed Pacification of Wujek on December 16, 1981 was the communist government's attempt to break up a strike at the Wujek Coal Mine in Katowice.
> 
> The city on fire is Warsaw, which was almost totally destroyed in World War II. It also put up an absolutely unbelievable amount of resistance. Seriously, do not fuck with Poland.


End file.
